Someone who have mailbox in different directory than indexes, can confirm if doveadm can recreate index (after deleting dovecot.index* files) or these files can be created only by connecting with IMAP client?
[root@example .INBOX]# pwd
[root@example .INBOX]# ls
dovecot.index dovecot.index.cache dovecot.index.log
[root@example .INBOX]# rm dovecot.index.log
rm: remove regular file ‘dovecot.index.log’? y
[root@example .INBOX]# doveadm force-resync -u sami INBOX
[root@example .INBOX]# ls -al
total 8228
drwx------ 2 vmail vmail 76 Dec 4 15:22 .
drwx------ 13 vmail vmail 4096 Nov 25 08:58 ..
-rw------- 1 vmail vmail 164080 Dec 4 15:22 dovecot.index
-rw------- 1 vmail vmail 8247872 Dec 4 15:21 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 vmail vmail 252 Dec 4 15:22 dovecot.index.log
[root@example .INBOX]# rm dovecot.index.*
rm: remove regular file ‘dovecot.index.cache’? y
rm: remove regular file ‘dovecot.index.log’? y
[root@example .INBOX]# doveadm index -u sami INBOX
[root@example .INBOX]# doveadm force-resync -u sami INBOX
[root@example .INBOX]# ls -al
total 180
drwx------ 2 vmail vmail 76 Dec 4 15:27 .
drwx------ 13 vmail vmail 4096 Nov 25 08:58 ..
-rw------- 1 vmail vmail 164080 Dec 4 15:27 dovecot.index
-rw------- 1 vmail vmail 5748 Dec 4 15:27 dovecot.index.cache
-rw------- 1 vmail vmail 308 Dec 4 15:27 dovecot.index.log
[root@example .INBOX]# doveconf -n | grep mail_location
mail_location = Maildir:/vmail/%u/Maildir:INDEX=/vmail/%u/index
[root@ketola .INBOX]# doveadm user sami | grep home